Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bob Wake

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. czar 18:35, 18 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Bob Wake

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No indication that the subject meets WP:GNG or WP:NAUTHOR. Provided sources are all written by the subject with the exception of a mere mention of having won an award of unclear notability [1] (which also isn't independent coverage if it's published by the organization giving the award). Searching online, I was able to find some brief coverage in the Wisconsin State Journal, which has about one paragraph that is actually pertinent biographical information about Wake in the context of interviewing him about his interactions with another author.

Listed awards do not appear to rise to the level WP:ANYBIO (nor are they backed by reliable sources for the most part). Originally nominated for PROD, dePROD by the initial editor without making any improvements or even leaving an edit summary. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 18:15, 11 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 18:15, 11 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 18:15, 11 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 18:15, 11 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Wisconsin-related deletion discussions. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 18:15, 11 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete agree with Rosguill, fails WP:NAUTHOR. Meeanaya (talk) 18:34, 11 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete a non-notable writer.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:43, 11 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I looked at the blurbs provided for Wake's Caffeine and Other Stories (1997).[2] One is by Midwest Book Review, a blurb factory which doesn't help establish notability. Two are sourced simply as from certain people who authored one book and edited another - they are presumably not from published reviews. One is from an e-zine called Erupture, a self-published source. Another is from Eclectica, which is an edited publication and an acceptable source. So that's one point scored out of the required two to meet WP:NBOOK. Finally there's a quote from "Tracy Walczak, BookLovers" which I am guessing is a defunct online publication. I haven't been able to find out whether it was an edited publication or not so I can't confirm a point here. I searched for other coverage of the author but found only a couple of short mentions in local publications. So, yeah, delete unless more sources show up. Haukur (talk) 21:52, 11 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Don't delete Adding another source here: Bob Wake is blurbed in David Foster Wallace's short story collection Oblivion according to The Howling Fantods [3] Bob Wake is a regional author from Wisconsin, similar to an August Derleth. More reading on regionalism in American literature here: [4] But being a regionalist does NOT equate to lack of notability; it is an important literary movement and the authors rise to level of recognition on Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Augustmcwake (talk • contribs) 23:04, 12 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Being big in Wisconsin would indeed be enough for notability. But you need a lot more sources to make the case. Book reviews, newspaper profiles, awards that get third party coverage – that kind of thing. Haukur (talk) 23:06, 12 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

And the page lists a number of notable regional Wisconsin awards won by the author in question, all of which are chosen by fellow Wisconsinite authors. In terms of third party coverage, here's an article about him from Madison.com, a news site consisting of three of the largest newspapers in the state. [5]contribs

It seems that you're confused about what notability means on Wikipedia. It's not a synonym for "important" or "famous", but is rather a measurement of the amount of coverage in available reliable sources. In order to demonstrate that the listed awards are notable, you will need to provide sufficient coverage of them in independent, reliable sources, to establish that they themselves meet notability guidelines for inclusion on Wikipedia (and even then, it's not a guaranteed indicator of notability, per WP:ANYBIO). And unless there's been some sort of mistake with the url, that "article" you've linked is a picture and one sentence, which is nowhere near the significant coverage required by WP:GNG. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 23:33, 12 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I do understand that, and I believe this author meets that threshold. Earlier entries on this discussion page have listed coverage deemed notable, and I can continue listing some sources. Here is Urban Milwaukee, an alternative paper with significant viewership, picking up the press release announcing one of the author's awards [6] Here's another link to an article in the Wisconsin State Journal by [7] Doug Moe discussing contributions of the author in question to the Wisconsin literary community. 'Augustmcwake' ^talk

That Wisconsin State Journal link moves the needle a little bit for me. Can you come up with more coverage like that? Or any reviews of books or short stories in edited publications? Haukur (talk) 14:57, 13 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not disputing anyone's right to evaluate the coverage in the Wisconsin State Journal for themselves, but just pointing out that this is the same source that I brought up in my nomination statement and described as having "brief coverage". _signed,Rosguill ^talk 17:07, 13 August 2019 (UTC) [reply]

Hah, thanks for pointing that out. It's laborious for me to access these pages since they give me a 451 error unless I go through a US proxy. I probably didn't bother originally so this looked new to me now.

I'd say we so far have two cases of non-trivial independent coverage in acceptable sources. This article and the Eclectica review. I'd like to see at least four cases to bring this to a keep. Haukur (talk) 17:18, 13 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I would posit it's subjective to say the coverage in the WSJ article is "brief." I would argue the entire article is about a significant project the author in question is doing for Wisconsin literary culture. I also feel that 4 sources versus 2 or 3 is equally subjective. However, here's another one - Bob Wake's Caffeine book of short stories is mentioned in Nancy Pearl's (very well known librarian and bestselling author)book "Now Read This II: A Guide to Mainstream Fiction 1990-2001." Bob Wake's book is listed as contributing to an emerging new genre called the near-novel. Here is the entire quote:

"A New Genre Is Born: In terms of the type of fiction being published, it's interesting to note that another fiction genre began to flourish in recent years. 'Near novels,' or books made up of a series of interconnected short stories in which characters either overlap or similar themes are explored, became ubiquitous on library and bookstore shelves. of course, the differences between a 'near novel' and a novel are fluid. One way to tell a novel from a 'near novel' is that in the latter, each chapter could stand alone (and frequently has been published as a short story). The chapters of a conventional novel, on the other hand, are much more interdependent on one another. Yet, at the same time, reading the stories or chapters in a 'near novel' as a unit significantly deepens their impact. Some examples of these 'near novels' include... Bob Wake's 'Caffeine and Other Stories.'"

Here is the link: https://books.google.com/books?id=1ap9eRLpLPUC&pg=PR18&lpg=PR18&dq=bob+wake+caffeine&source=bl&ots=URsrNBdZ1M&sig=ACfU3U2ibvFgCztYsqtpgpz6RNjbLHmPxQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjKy9CXzYDkAhXhT98KHfzvCtUQ6AEwCnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=bob%20wake%20caffeine&f=false 'Augustmcwake'

I agree that the WSJ article is perfectly decent coverage. As for the Now Read This mention, I don't feel appearing in a list of eight books, with no comment on that book in particular, quite cuts it as non-trivial coverage. It's not nothing, but it's not much.

I arrive at the number 'four' this way: By WP:NBOOK you need two pieces of coverage for a book article. And if you have two notable books, there's a decent case for an author article. Two plus two is four. By being a little bit generous we can apply this even if the pieces don't line up as two pieces on one book and two pieces on another. This personal baseline is probably on the inclusionist side of things over here. And I'm not insisting on New York Times reviews either – an edited web publication is fine, a local newspaper is fine, a couple of paragraphs of analysis in a book or academic article would be fine. Even a defunct web publication would do as long as archive.org could show it to us. And coverage which is not available online is fine too, as long as we can confirm its existence. Haukur (talk) 20:17, 13 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Two reliably-published and in-depth reviews each of two authored books (not edited volumes or books from his small press) would also be a borderline pass of WP:AUTHOR for me. However in this case, all I found (see links below) was two reviews of one book, both dubiously reliable rather than in established and notable publications, and none of the other. Are there more that I'm missing? —David Eppstein (talk) 21:30, 14 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No, we're in agreement here on deleting – the above paragraph is me speaking hypothetically and generally. I guess the thread is so long now that this has become confusing. Haukur (talk) 22:29, 14 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Founding a small press is not itself inherently notable, nor is authoring and self-publishing one book (Summer of the Cinetherapist) and one short story collection (Caffeine and Other Stories). I can find a couple of dubiously-reliable reviews of the story collection [8] [9] but none for the other book and it's not enough to convince me of a pass of WP:AUTHOR. Nor do I see any evidence of any other kind of notability. The Wisconsin State Journal piece does mention Wake, but it's only one source (not enough for GNG) and too anecdotal to be useful for much. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:59, 13 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.